The background description provided here is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Substrate processing systems may be used to perform etching and/or other treatment of substrates such as semiconductor wafers. Example processes that may be performed on a substrate include, but are not limited to, a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process, a chemically enhanced plasma vapor deposition (CEPVD) process, a sputtering physical vapor deposition (PVD) process, an ion implantation process, and/or other etch (e.g., chemical etch, plasma etch, reactive ion etch, etc.), deposition, and cleaning processes. A substrate may be arranged on a substrate support, such as a pedestal in a processing chamber of the substrate processing system. For example only, during etching, a gas mixture including one or more precursors is introduced into the processing chamber and plasma is struck to etch the substrate.
A load lock (e.g., an inbound or outbound load lock) or other transfer tool may be used to transfer semiconductor wafers from an atmospheric environment to a vacuum environment (i.e., from outside of the processing chamber into the processing chamber), or vice versa. The load lock itself may include a vacuum chamber containing a pedestal. The wafer is arranged on (and transferred to and from) the pedestal. For example, the wafer may be transferred from the pedestal to a plating or other process cell of a processing chamber in the substrate processing system for deposition, etching, etc. The pedestal lifts the wafer onto and off of a robot (e.g., an end effector of the robot) used to transfer the wafer between the load lock and the process cell.